True Colors
by koalabear
Summary: Set during the episode Ruskie Business. Nothing very deep, just a little blurb because I didn't like it that it was Leo at the window..... 212 hits and 3 reviews. Does that mean people hated it? :


**True Colors  
Spoilers: 1.15 Russkie Business  
Notes:** I didn't like the fact that it was Leo either.  
As an Aussie it really hurt to spell colours without a "u".

_Between getting fooled by the Russian bride and finding out that Duncan has the hots for Meg, I've had my fill of surprises tonight. J Geils was right. Love stinks. You can dress it up with sequins and shoulder pads but one way or another you're just gonna end up alone at the spring dance strapped into uncomfortable underwear._

Veronica sat in her car. Hell, it was an eighties dance that alone should mean it was all right for her to let go and cry her eyes out as if this was anyone of Molly Ringwald teen movies. Bring on the eighties clichés, she didn't care.

_At least I was noble ….. and Meg looked so happy ….. I can't hate someone like her._

Taking a shuddering breath she tried to control her tears, staring fixedly ahead.

A figure appeared at the side of the car and knocked on the window. A crazy, crazy part of her hoped that it was going to be Duncan.

_Yeah right. I know I was pretending it was Molly Ringwald movie but pretence can only go so far. Instead of Prince Charming …. I get ….. _

"Logan." She wound her window down and stared at him questioningly.

He stood before her, wearing sunglasses but no trousers as the Tom Cruise character in "Risky Business". Only Logan Echolls would show up for a school dance on the day that he finally accepted that his mother was dead.

"I cannot escape Tom Cruise." she said to herself with a note of despair in her voice.

"Veronica Mars – dare I ask. What's wrong? It's your party and you'll cry if you want to?"

"You've got your eras totally wrong, Logan." she said, wiping her eyes and glaring at him.

"I love the eighties." he told her, studying her face from behind his sunglasses. She could smell the alcohol on his breath. "So why aren't you inside wang chunging tonight with everyone? Could it be that you caught a glimpse of a certain ex with a certain perky blonde and now your mood is out there with mine?" He deliberately kept his voice light. "_Love is a battlefield_, baby."

"I don't want to talk about it." she told him. She didn't want to be rude and abrupt, even with Logan. The memory of him weeping in her arms earlier that day was too raw and fresh in her mind. "And I sure as hell don't want any more of your eighties song allusions.

He held up his hip flask. "Wanna get drunk and sing along to woefully depressing Patsy Cline songs in your car?" he suggested.

"Take off your sunglasses." she told him abruptly.

He straightened. "I'm not sure if I want to do that. I was going for two eighties birds with one stone …. Cory Hart and his _Sunglasses at night_ and all that ….."

"No wisecracks, Logan. So not in the mood."

He shrugged and took off his glasses, tossing them into her car and stared directly into her eyes. His eyes were red-rimmed, probably from a combination of emotion and alcohol and there was no humour in his face as his gaze met hers.

"So Madonna. You're not going to go and join the party?" he asked her finally.

"Get in, someone will arrest you for flashing those pale white chicken legs around." she told him. He looked offended, walking around and opened the passenger door, picking up his discarded glasses and sitting down, leaning back in the seat and looking at her.

"That is a really low blow, Veronica. Just for that, I might puke in your car."

_He didn't have pale white chicken legs. They were …. nice….. but there was no way I was going to give him the satisfaction of knowing what I thought. _

Logan sat quietly in the car. They could hear the sound of the music from the dance in the background.

"Hey it's your song," Logan said with a wry grin as _Madonna's Into the Groove_ came on. "Madonna was so good before she developed muscles in her arms to rival Arnie's."

They lapsed into silence again. It seemed insane, but Veronica found it oddly comforting just sitting there in the dark with Logan. Both were too emotionally exhausted and wrung out to snap at each other and sat slumped in their seats, heads lolling back on their headrest looking at one another in the darkness.

"How are you going – apart from the obvious?" She asked him, wondering if he was going to make smart-ass remark back at her. His capacity to trivialise, quip and pun was endless and she had seen it before, the more in pain he was, the crueller and more outrageous his humour became.

"I'll get there, Ronnie." he told her softly and she was startled by the quietness of his answer.

Then he grinned. "_So many times, it happens too fast, you change your passion for glory, don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past, you must fight just to keep them alive_."

She groaned. "No, no, _no_. Do not torture me like that." She smiled despite herself though and he grinned back.

"Sure you don't want a drink?" He asked her.

"Definitely and I'd prefer it if you didn't drink anymore if you think puking in my car is more likely than not."

"_You're playing so cool obeying every rule_

_Deep way down in your heart_

_You're burning yearning for some- somebody to tell you_

_That life ain't passing you by_

_I'm trying to tell you it will if you don't even try_."

"Oh that is so many different types of lame I cannot believe." she said, laughing unabashedly now. "Do not try and quote eighties songs to me as some kind of profound philosophy. What?" she demanded as she realised that he was staring at her with an arrested expression on his face, his dark eyes very unfathomable.

"Is my eyeliner smudged? Lip gloss smeared?"

"It's been a while since I've seen you laugh like that, that's all." he said. There was a sudden realisation in his eyes that unsettled her, made her feel oddly light-headed and breathless and she gave another laugh.

"Well I'll laugh again if you can manage to fit the line _as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti_ into a sentence."

"You should watch out before throwing challenges like that." he countered and as the laughter filled the car, both of them didn't look in a hurry to move. Whether or not they knew it, something was different and something had changed.

THE END


End file.
